OBMEP Releases List of Qualifiers for the Second Round

The OBMEP (Brazilian Public School Mathematics Olympiad) released on Monday (3) the preliminary list of students who qualified for the second phase of the 21st edition. Organized by the IMPA, the country’s largest science competition reached more than 18.3 million students from all regions of the country in the first phase. To see the list of students who qualified for the second phase, visit the OBMEP website.

The 21st OBMEP 2026 brought together students from 58,238 public and private schools in 99.93% of the municipalities. Approximately 900,000 students will be eligible to take the second-phase exam, which will be held on October 17 at 2:30 p.m. (Brasília time). The exam locations will be announced on August 28.

This year, OBMEP will hand out 8,450 national medals – 650 gold, 1,950 silver and 5,850 bronze – as well as 51,000 honorable mention certificates. To further encourage student participation, the competition will also reward the best state performances with at least 20,500 medals.

Students who win national medals will be invited to take part in the PIC (Junior Scientific Initiation Program), which offers in-depth classes in mathematics. Medal winners from public schools participating in the PIC receive a monthly grant of R$300 from the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development).

Created in 2005 by IMPA, the math competition encourages the study of mathematics and identifies young talent in the field. Other objectives of the initiative include promoting social inclusion through the dissemination of knowledge and contributing to the improvement of the quality of basic education, enabling a greater number of Brazilian students to access high-quality educational materials.

Over the course of two decades, OBMEP has also established itself as an important gateway to higher education. IMPA Tech, IMPA’s tuition-free undergraduate program, reserves spots for science olympiad medalists. Other institutions of higher education, such as USP (University of São Paulo), Unicamp (State University of Campinas), and Unesp (São Paulo State University), also have admissions processes designed for students who have excelled in academic competitions.